If you’re interested, this video might shed some light on it.

https://youtu.be/S96e6TdJlNE

Welcome to the spectacle of hyperreality.

Nice reference.

Although I’m not demanding absolute truth, I mean in the context of society truth is relative and convincing everyone of truth (not absolute, but the best objective truth we have) is virtually impossible, if you want to convince people it has to be simple and seductive, a caricature of the truth, a lie. Half the country subscribes to magical thinking, and most place more value in image over substance.

Even in the realm of science, there is no such thing as absolute truth, at least not in any capacity humans can ever understand. We have theories based on empirical evidence which we accept as “truth” because that is as good as we can get, some things have more truth than others, which closes the gap on things we have to take as self-evident and better align with understanding and reality.

Refer to Agrippa’s trilemma: it is theoretically impossible to prove any truth.

Ahh gotcha, well I recommend reading some Baudrillard, you’re angry over something that doesn’t exist anymore (if it ever did). Truth is all just relative now, shifting like sand in the desert.

Whether he is or isn’t is irrelevant, it’s the image of him portrayed by media that counts. The medium is the message. You should really look into Vladislav Surkov, the architect of Russia’s post-truth society, which the Trump admin imported to the states and is now common practice. The guy is clearly an idiot, maybe he means well but again that is irrelevant. This has Republican hit job written all over it from the get-go, I wouldn’t be surprised if Collins team found out about the tattoo (before he even decided to run) and directed “political technicians” to infiltrate his social circle and subtly nudge this guy to run, consequently becoming an unwitting accomplice to sabotage a genuine left-wing movement.

I may be reading too much into it, but consider “His former political director said he “knows damn well” what the tattoo signifies.”.

I understand you’ve invested a lot of emotional energy into this guy. It’s best to disconnect those feelings from things you can’t change, if he wins he wins, if not that’s ok, learn and grow from the experience.

When the media stated we live in a “post-truth” society, they meant it. Trump admin imported the Russian propaganda tactics of Surkov. This is our reality now, nothing is true or false, it’s all just information.

His former political director said he “knows damn well” what the tattoo signifies.

Only 13 of IG Farben received prison terms, from 1.5 to 8 years, then received senior positions on the successor companies after.

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

—Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951).

This whole thing feels reminiscent of the Maoist Hundred Flowers campaign, in so far as we are in the lead up to a campaign of severe repression on all those who have been outspoken against the administration.

To settle ideological problems, one must act through the democratic methods of discussion, criticism, persuasion, and appropriate education.” But we must remember the—incidentally quite remarkable—method of the “Hundred Flowers.” As in Nazi Germany in 1943,° there was a period of apparent liberalism when expressions of all sort of criticism, deviationism, idealistic and religious inclinations, and so on, were tolerated, authorized, even encouraged. Then, after all opponents had spoken, the wave of repression hit them: arrests, jail sentences, and, above all, political re-education took place. The purpose of the “Hundred Flowers Campaign” was to make opponents come out in the open so they could be arrested and eliminated.

https://archive.org/details/jacques-ellul-propaganda

A single sentence can contain multiple fallacies. Also it’s 5 logical fallacies, 1 rhetorical technique and 1 that just describes your general attitude. I’m not wasting any more time on you.

Your argument relies on a litany of logical fallacies: straw man, false dilemma, sarcasm as substitute, slippery slope, red herring and on top of that you’re gish galloping and making a bad faith argument.

I’m just going to address your comment about Black people and sports.

Black people do not have a higher natural talent in sports, for Black youth sports is one of the only ways to achieve success, so they place a higher emphasis on sports. It’s evident because they are only dominant in the sports they have access to.

Pointing out that you harbor racist sentiments is not thought terminating, it’s apparent in your writing.

Thought-terminating cliché, it’s used to dismiss arguments and shut down critical thinking. It’s a tactic associated with cult language.

It’s a cult brainwashing technique.

Cults use jargon section of video for explanation:

https://youtu.be/3ZGTT_Vy_Bw

Except for Harris calling Trump a communist, that’s just plain stupidity.

Not really. If you use Hayek’s term for socialism, which is synonymous with totalitarianism and command economy, it fits. The entire Austrian school of thought would define (if they were honest) Trump as communist. From that perspective: communist, socialist, fascist, totalitarian are distinctions without a difference.

Americans are lazy and opt to think in buzzwords and slogans for the most part. To the right, Communist means bad, so you call bad people communist.

Many free-market economists and business leaders who have long worshipped the free-market ideals of Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, and Milton Friedman should be aware that their idols would be rolling in their graves right now, as rather than pursue standard laissez-faire conservative economic policies, MAGA has gone Marxist and even, increasingly, Maoist.

https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/magas-march-toward-command-economy

We must here return for a moment to the position which precedes the suppression of democratic institutions and the creation of a totalitariam regime. In this stage it is the general demand for quick and determined government action that is the dominating element in the situation, dissatisfaction with the slow and cumbersome course of democratic procedure which makes action for action’s sake the goal. It is then the man or the party who seems strong and resolute enough “to get things done” who exercises the greatest appeal. “Strong” in this sense means not merely a numerical majority — it is the ineffectiveness of parliamentary majorities with which people are dissatisfied. What they will seek is somebody with such solid support as to inspire confidence that he can carry out whatever he wants. It is here that the new type of party, organized on military lines, comes in.

The Road to Serfdom, Hayek.

I should add, the right generally has a vague, emotional, derogatory meaning to those terms (communist, socialist, marxist etc), so using those terms on them can short circuit their programming.

Hate to break it to you but we are well past the coup stage. The journalist badge stuff the other day was an important milestone.

Regardless of the pervasive reach of interpersonal social media and of the Internet … control over the mass media emanating from the political center will still be our most important weapon in establishing our authority after the coup.

Coup D’État: A Practical Handbook, Luttwak

One form of 4D Warfare is memetic warfare. Many have studied this grand and ancient art. I hope that by the end of this book, you will be able to perfect your memeing to unprecedented levels of winning.

There you have it! This guy is a major, major source of MAGA ideology and strategy. And this confirms that MAGA’s strategy really is a disingenuous, intentionally heightened, intentiontally threatening-and-gaslighting spectacle of fascism (in addition, of course, to being an actual fascist movement). Like a small creature puffing themselves up defensively, they are intentionally wielding the tools of propaganda, gaslighting, and manipulation in a campaign of public terrorization. Confirmed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/sorceryofthespectacle/comments/xa2zz5/deleted_by_user/

Nice sentiment, not based in reality though.

Voters are guided by their own personal circumstances, often punishing leaders when economic conditions worsen and rewarding them when they improve, paying little heed to the politician’s actions.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2017/01/30/book-review-democracy-for-realists-why-elections-do-not-produce-responsive-government-by-christopher-h-achen-and-larry-m-bartels/

That was interesting, it’s too bad he didn’t mention how liberalism itself has been caricaturised. He said how liberalism believes all cultures and peoples are essentially interchangeable, that is demonstrably false, that is the caricaturised version of liberalism. The core tenet of liberalism is the right to be an individual, which carries the obligation to respect that right in others. There are cultures that do not respect that right, and are incompatible with liberalism. The consequence of neoliberalism and the total atomization of the individual has annihilated the core of liberalism, through the destruction of the cultural norm of respecting others individuality in so far as they uphold that obligation themselves, transforming liberalism into the negation of itself, that the “fuck you got mine” ethos and the cultures/ideologies that force themselves on others should be respected.

I think he misses a crucial point, that the “image” or “mythos” is the real, or hyperreal. In today’s society, those caricatures (depressingly) are more “real” than real. The medium is the message.